Pod Party

Teradek, Paralinx, and SmallHD users now have a place to hang out, talk tech and get support for their products.

In the world of wireless video signals for cinema and television, Teradek and Paralinx products have come a long way in recent years. The difference between the company's products? Paralinx offers great zero-delay uncompressed wireless signals in stripped down units that are lightweight and plug n' play. Teradek generally has more features built in, things like iPad monitoring and live-streaming options.

This is our group's Genius Bar.

Whether you own any of these products or not, Creative Solutions Los Angeles (located at 5329 West San Fernando Road, Los Angeles, CA) is a resource to learn everything you wanted to know about wireless video signal but were afraid to ask. We dropped by the newly converted location (formerly the Paralinx facility) to learn about their vision for the space:

"This is our group's Genius Bar," says Nicol Verheem, GM of the independent unit within the Vitec Group that consists of Teradek, Paralinx and SmallHD. "We want to bring people in, demo stuff and share knowledge. The objective here is to have a face to face relationship with the customer, where he or she can really experience the product in an appropriate way. We have experts here that can give you a demo based on whatever your workflow is."

Our motto here is 'Educate, outfit and support.'

When asked why Teradek usually targets the cinema marketplace first when building a new product:

"This industry is always willing to try new things, they want to know about new tools and new workflows. They want to get that new shot. The [cinema] industry is very unique, and it's a very sharing driven culture. So when I come up with a new engineering idea, I try to introduce it to the cinema market first. If it works there, it will proliferate to the other marketplaces."

"We come from the film industry, we like to think that we are our customers." Paralinx Founder Greg Smokler is happy to have the former Paralinx HQ evolve into a more dynamic space.

"Our motto here is 'educate, outfit and support.' You can come here with an idea that you need some sort of wireless equipment and you'll see every single product from all out of brands and you can talk to people who really understand all the products. You can try it out, walk around with it, stick it on a camera, set up a demo, borrow one. And if you own one we can show you how to use it, or if something went wrong with it we can troubleshoot it, repair it, or facilitate the RMA process if it's something more severe."

Other than sharing the ins and outs of wireless technology, they hope to use the space for related workshops, such as lighting, cinematography and color. And not necessarily exclusively for Vitec products, Smokler says:

"We are relatively brand agnostic; we just want to use this space for cool things and hope to continue curating events of interest to the community."

Now that these three companies are a unit (With SmallHD in the mix), it's interesting to think about how each of the products will integrate and evolve into each other as time goes on. For now, new and existing customers no longer have to make the commute to Irvine for immediate support on these products. They've created a really warm and friendly vibe there so far, so if you’re in the LA area, consider this place a new resource for all of us.

3 Comments

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